Anyone with an interest in the loss and destruction of public records should
read Rochester author Nicholson Baker's book "Double Fold: Libraries and the
Assault on Paper." He documents the shocking story of how the federal
government has provided hundreds of millions of dollars for "microfilm
preservation" of documents, books and newspapers. With few exceptions, the
originals were cut from their bindings, discarded, pulped or sold to
collectors. Even the Library of Congress is guilty and their discards often
show up on eBay, sometimes selling for hundreds or even thousands of
dollars.

This still continues today. I recently heard the head of the New York State
Newspaper Project speak. His primary focus was on content preservation via
microfilming at any cost. He was not a researcher or user of microfilm
himself and had no appreciation for the problems of microfilm. He admitted
that quality inspection of microfilm is cost prohibitive but brushed off
problems such as improper developing, out-of-focus images, and missing
pages, problems that are often not found until long after the original is
gone.

Here in Erie County, there is an identified need for a regional records
storage facility but funding is a problem. Just a few days ago, an
alternative solution was mentioned in a newspaper article - microfilm
preservation! All those old city documents, including those with the
signatures of Grover Cleveland and Millard Fillmore and your
great-grandfather's naturalization records can be discarded once they are
"preserved" on microfilm. Apparently, it is still easier to fund a
microfilming project than to build a records storage facility.

At the end of his book, Baker lists four recommendations:

1. Libraries that receive public money should be required to publish monthly
lists of discards on their websites so that the public has some way of
determining which of them are acting responsibly on  behalf of their
collections.

2. The Library of Congress should lease or build a large building and put
everything in it in call number order that they are sent by publishers and
can't or don't want to hold on site. If they are unwilling to perform the
basic function of a national repository, then Congress should designate and
fund some other archive to do the job.

3.Several libraries around the country should begin to save the country's
current newspaper output in bound form.

4. The National Endowment for the Humanities should either abolish the US
Newspaper Program and the Brittle Books Program entirely, or require as a
condition of funding that all microfilming and digital scanning be
nondestructive and all originals be saved afterward.

Chris Andrle


----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel H. Weiskotten" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, October 29, 2001 7:25 PM
Subject: Re: Question RE: the private sale of public records


> I have just been through this with some records I noticed on an on-line
> auction site where hundreds of records, including whole libers of court
and
> land records, from Lycoming County PA were being sold.
>
> Clearly these came out of the county offices and the seller was claiming
> that he had found them in an ancestor's attic.  I notified the auction
> site, the County Sheriff, hisorical society, libraries, and a number of
> genealogists thinking that they might want them back.
>
> While some did express interest in them the general concensus was that
they
> had been disposed of by the county foilloing microfilming (one of hundreds
> of sad stories) and they did not want them back.
>
> What was so idiotic about all of this is the way it is all dismissed as
> "well, we can't do anything about it now" and that while it may not have
> been illegal to sell these things it was very much wrong from an
historical
> perspective.
>
> Al of thee items wer ebeing stripped and cut up to sell as individual
> scripts of interst to genealogists - whole legers and libers torn into a
> thousand peices each selling for 10 bucks.
>
> When I checked into the background of the seller and buyers I found one of
> those fishy roundabouts that made me callt eh police - the seller claimed
> to have found them, sold them to the buyer who then sold them back to the
> seller, who in turn sold them back to the buyer who then was cutting them
> apart only to have the original seller buy some of them back again!  (yes,
> I know that's confusing).
>
> When I brought this web of deceit (and their official provenience) to the
> attention of the auction site all they did was ask the seller if he was
> legit, which he of course said he was.  The local police never even batted
> an eye, and most of the genealogists I told wanted to buy bits and pieces
> before it was "too late"  I finally did get the scoop that they had been
> discarded by the county following a microfilming project about 20 years
ago.
>
> Here in Virginia where I now live the state library recently recovered
> offical records that were taken by Union soldiers in the 1860s and which
> were privately held until they showed up on the same auction site.  I
> understand that they paid good money to get them all back (and the dealer
> took out all the good stuff signed by famous people and got in trouble for
> trying to sell those items seperately) but the uproar was that the state
> should not have to pay for records which are theirs and which are never
> supposed to leave their care.  I believe they were treated as stolen
> merchandise but the dealer was paid anyway (until he was found to be
> cutting them up).
>
> I know that countless official records newspapers and other documents
which
> were once public property have been dumped into the market, and many
others
> were recycled or shredded following microfilming (our own NY State
> newspapers particularly come to mind).  In most cases the time of their
> dispersal and destruction was not when conservation and preservation was
of
> concern, and that space and that the information was still preserved even
> if on film, but the questiuon still remains as to what do we do with
> records that are publicly generated and which find their way, through
> official channels or not, into the public domain.  Do we treat them like
> old books discarded from libraries - free game - or do we try to find a
way
> to undo the mistakes of an era when preservation was the least of
concerns.
>
> Remember that the incredible archive of the East and West India Companies
> were sold at auction and sent to the rag factory in 1821 - a few years
> before E.B. O'Callaghan went searching for them.  The loss is immesurable.
>
> What happens in 10 years when the original microfilms reach the end of
> their 50 year life-span?
>
>         Dan W.